St. Paul Pioneer Press tech blog by Julio Ojeda-Zapata

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St. Paul Pioneer Press tech blog by Julio Ojeda-Zapata

Order Chipotle via updated iPhone app, and taste freedom

I run in an Apple-adoring, Chipotle-crazed crowd.

Why virtually all of my iPhone-totin’ and Macintosh-tappin’ buddies happen to also be obsessed with those iconic foil-sheathed burritos, I can’t say. It must be a sort of cosmic connection, like the Force, invisible to the naked eye.

Chipotle has done all of us burrito Jedi a huge favor, in any event.

This week it updated its iPhone app after years of neglect, allowing it to run properly on an iPhone 5, and with a number of enhancements such as an option to specify brown instead of white rice. (It’s important.)

The app’s core function remains the same. Customize your burrito on your iPhone with a few taps, add a side and a drink, and fire off your order, paid in full, to your neighborhood’s Chipotle.

Breeze in bit later, stride imperiously to the head of the line and retrieve your bagged order like the very important person you are (at least to Chipotle, for a few seconds), while the Luddite or Android-afflicted rabble cool their heels in the queue.

Life is good.

I tried it this week. As an experiment, I placed an order via the app while my lunchtime companion bought her burrito the old-fashioned way. Sure enough, she got bogged down for agonizing minutes because the order ahead of hers had a ton of food-line items, while I had my grub within a minute or two of walking in the door.

So be a slave no longer. Nab this app, and taste spicy, lime-tart freedom – that is, if you have an iPhone. If not, entertain yourself during your queuing purgatory by reading this terrific Gizmodo post about the new app, with my sincere condolences.